The Swim Team Interest Meeting has been scheduled for Wednesday, October 10 from 4:00-4:30 pm in the GAHS Community Room. All new and returning swimmers are expected to attend.

If for some reason you cannot make it, please make sure to sign up at this link if you did not do so at the spring interest meeting: (https://tinyurl.com/gahsswimsignup ).

If you would like to get ahead on the required forms for this season, you can find them in under the forms tab above. In order to participate at tryouts, all swimmers must have a current physical (after May 1, 2018), concussion form, student activities form, and yellow emergency card on file. I will be passing out the yellow emergency cards at the Interest meeting, but will happily take your other forms as soon as you have them ready for me! Please make sure that all required fields and signatures are filled out completely. Some common things that are left off of these forms are insurance information and student signatures, and I would like to minimize the amount of forms I have to hand back this year.

Summer Dryland with Jason Ford and Coach Lytle begins Monday, June 18**Swimmers must have a current physical on file at GAHS for the 2018-19 school year to participate**** This is optional, but a great way to prepare for next season and bond with the team!**When: Mondays and Wednesdays 8:00 -9:00 amWhere: GAHS Weight RoomDRYLAND SIGNUP: https://tinyurl.com/gahsdryland

Tentative Tryouts Date- November 5 & 6 during regular practice time TBDAll new and returning swimmers who did not qualify for the State Meet last season will participate in tryouts. Swimmers who qualified for the State Swim Meet last year will not be required to try out, but will be required to attend one night of tryouts to assist the coaches with timing and recording. Swimmers will swim the following events for time on each night:November 5: 100 Freestyle and 100 ButterflyNovember 6: 100 Backstroke and 100 Breaststroke

1.Tuesday, June 5th- 4:00-4:30 pm Swim Team Interest Meeting, Location TBD- I will be sending out an email to middle school athletic directors and putting this in the announcements, but if you have friends who are rising 9th graders/current GAHS students who are interested in coming out for the team next year, spread the word!

2.Tuesday, June 5th at 4:30 pm - 2018 Athletic Physical Event at GAHS- get your athletic physical done for the 2018-19 school year! See the flyer below for details!

Winter Sports Awards Night – Wednesday, March 21st - Team End of Season Dinner will take place from 5:30-6:30 pm in the Community Room and then we will move to the Auditorium for the main Awards at 7 pm. More details about the dinner will be sent out.

Jaguar Athletic Association Luau- May 18th at 7 p.m. at the Virginia Cliff Inn- This is event is for adults and is one of the big sports fundraisers of the year. Each sports team is supposed to provide an item for the auction. I am in need of one or two parents to serve as our swim team rep for the JAA and to take the lead on putting something together for the auction. If this is something you are interested in doing, please let me know. Jenni Pokrywka did a great job putting together our auction item last year, and I’m sure she could answer any questions you have about it.

I have attached the meet announcement for the Henrico Meet on Tuesday at SwimRVA. (See Meet Information Tab) This meet is actually going to start around 6 pm since all Henrico teams will be present and it’s Senior Night. Even though this is not technically a “Conference Meet”, they are running it and scoring it like a Championship meet. Here is the tentative timeline we will follow the day of the meet:

3:15 pm Team Dinner/Heavy Snack/Announcements3:45-4:00 pm Bus Departs GAHS- I’m aiming to leave closer to 3:45 pm to avoid dismissal traffic5:00-6:00 Warm Ups6:00 pm Coaches Meeting6:08 pm Meet Start-The meet could end around 9:30pm, but that is my tentative guess and not a definite. The bus will return when the meet ends.

Swimmers, I have attached entries (See Meet Information Tab) If your times look funny, it’s because the meet director wanted me to enter times from this current season, which is why some of you have NT or a time that is slower than your best time from last year.

After this Meet, here’s what’s coming up:

1.Practice on Wednesday- Dryland is Cancelled. We will have a Team Bonding Night of Water Polo during our regular practice time at the YMCA. This will be the last practice that the whole team will have to attend.

2.Regional Team Announcement: I will announce the Regional Team via email on Wednesday. From Thursday on, only the Regional Team needs to come to practice.

3.Team Pictures on Thursday at 4 pm: Please wear your team tshirt and black athletic pants. All members of the Regional Team will have dryland practice after pictures, so plan accordingly!

First of all, thank you all for a great first two meets! Many thanks to everyone who contributed to team dinners, timed at the meets and served as an official. It truly takes a village to get the season off the ground, and we could not have done this without youSwimmers, be sure to thank your parents!

I have updated the website with the results from the two meets (under meet information) and the most up to date meet schedule (under schedule tab). Our next meet will be Thursday, January 4th vs. Lee Davis at Randolph Macon College. More information to come when we get back from break!

Holiday Practice Schedule- I will be holding OPTIONAL practices at our usual time at the YMCA next week. I will be traveling to Northern VA for Christmas, so there will be no practice during the second week of break. This will be a great opportunity for those of you who want to work on something specific, and depending on the number of swimmers coming on a particular night, we may have some fun J Again, these are optional practices, and they will not count against your practice attendance if you do not attend.

I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving Break and are ready for the true beginning of the swim season! Practices are getting more challenging and our first meet is next week!

For tomorrow, there is a change in plans to accommodate the Specialty Center Information Night. We have some swimmers presenting at Center night, so I wanted to make sure everyone had a chance to participate. Everything will still take place in the library. Here is the schedule:

4:00 - 4:20 Team Meeting- Captain Announcement and Varsity Letter Requirements- We will meet by the high top tables so we are out of the way of set up for Ashley’s NLI signing.

4:30 - 5:30 Ashley’s NLI Signing Ceremony

Swim Team Parents Meeting is Cancelled – A lot of parents have contacted me about work conflicts and the Center staff needs to get into the Library right after Ashley’s signing ceremony to set up for their information night, so I am opting to do a “virtual” parent meeting via email. Tomorrow I will send out the PowerPoint I was going to use and any handouts will be attached.

To give you a Preview: My goal this year is to facilitate more parent involvement on the team by having a parent coordinator for meet volunteers, a parent coordinator for team dinners/bonding events, a parent coordinator for apparel throughout the season (regional tshirts/states tshirts etc), and a parent contact for the Jaguar Athletic Association/fundraising. Obviously different parents can fill these roles each season, but I would eventually like to get to a point where we have a structured swim team parent committee, which will help tremendously with logistics as our team continues to grow.

There is no dryland or water practice tomorrow.

2.The Freestyle Frenzy Meet on Friday, December 8th has been confirmed by the meet director.

a. All information I have currently received pertaining to this meet can be found on our website http://glenallenswimteam.weebly.com/ under the new “Meet Information” Tab. In the future, this tab is where I will post everything you need to know about future meets ( the schedule, entries, results, etc). Please review the information carefully.

b. All Swimmers must RSVP for this meet by Dec 1, using the link provided on our website. USA Swimmers who are competing at USA Swimming meets are excused from this meet, but you still need to RSVP. The purpose of this meet is to provide a fun travel meet for high school swimmers not competing in the big USA meets scheduled that weekend.

c. I will need parent drivers for this meet. I have provided a tentative schedule for the day as well as a link for you to sign up. Once I know the number of swimmers participating I will have an idea of how many drivers I need. We have buses scheduled for most of our meets this year, so this will be one of the few times I ask for parent drivers. Many thanks in advance!

3.Practice Absences – These can now be reported using the Practice Absences Tab on our website. This way, I can check for practice absences in one place.

4.Our website- I am really working hard to post more of our team information on our website, as I know emails can get lost and can be tedious to sift through. Please bookmark our website and check it regularly. I always post the team updates I send out on the home page of our website.

Again, thank you all for supporting our team! See you tonight at practice!